April 15, 2007

the quiet game chronicle

MP3: The Quiet Game (1 mb)

When I was a young lad and my family would pile into the car for a long trip, my sister and I would - as children do - be quite loud and obnoxious in the backseat throughout the journey, deprived as we were of any of the usual stimulations and attention required by those of that age. (This was long before we even dreamed of having a portable DVD player to calm us.) In what was to be at once a successful and beautiful stroke of genius, my parents told us how to play "The Quiet Game" which was a very simple game to play in that whoever made any sound first lost.

Determined to be winners, my sister and I shut up for long stretches at a time, much to our parents' delight, though we weren't beyond trying to trick each other into laughing or screaming. Naturally, the rules were modified a little to prohibit any touching or prodding of the other contestant.

I've never been the quickest bullet out of the gun, but years passed before I realized the true purpose of that game, presented as it was in the spirit of fun. Both of my parents acted in the local theatre, so I'm sure that didn't dampen their persuasive skills....

Well, fast forward to now and I realize the importance of imposing my own Quiet Game upon myself. The world is too much with us, this is true. As fun as that can be, there come times when I need to let the world not be with me for a while so I can soak in the stuff behind the clatter and pull the magic back into my life (and hopefully spread it around a little bit). It seems increasingly necessary now that they put High Fructose Corn Syrup in just about anything you could possibly want to eat.

Anyway, one of the things that stayed with me from Haruki Murakami's book The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle was the magic achieved by the protagonist during his imaginative time spent sitting at the bottom of a deep, dark, quiet well. A place of silence and sensory depravation, where he was able to, if not unravel the mysteries of his life, at least journey through them toward some resolution.

A one-minute audio experiment from this quiet, rainy Jersey Shore day is at the top of this blog for your consideration....

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What a coincidence - I just finished reading Wind-Up Bird Chronicle on my honeymoon (bought it for the cover, dontcha know). What a tremendous read, and it keeps hanging around my consciousness. Made me a little nervous about wells - I'm not prepared for them to take me on a journey. But the total remove it seemed to promise was alluring....
PS. This is Doh. I can never get blogger to recognize me, although I have an account.